Well, here we are, August already and I've spent pretty much every spare day I can in the yurt. It's been lovely not to have to faff around with the fire every day and be able to get up in the mornings without the desparate sprint to the fire to re-kindle it. The downside is that the kind of food I can eat has changed a little because of the lack of outside refrigeration services one finds in winter. Mainly it's been new potatoes from the garden, and tomatoes, pasta, stuff like that.
A new addition to the tech side of the yurt is a solar powered fan. I re-adapted the yurtcon to suck fresh air in from outside whenever there is enough light to power the fan. Solar panel is a £20 job from Maplins, tucked under one of the crown cover straps. This way there is a constant flow of fresh air coming into the yurt even when I'm away. Eventually it will become an extractor and mounted in a clear section of the crown, this will be to overcome the problem of condensation when cooking, or on hot days when there is something wet inside, like a towel.
I've gone back to the Squadron leisure batteries, doubled up and linked to the solar panel. The Elecsol batteries don't last that well and trying to get any empathy from the person who imports them is like getting blood from a stone. They are ok, but nothing more than that.
Wind turbine is next on the list, right after I have become Moped Overlord, keeper of all Velosolexes (that might take a while)
Z.
Ah! Almost forgot. Insect de jour is the earwig, omnipresent, indestructable, infinitely creepy, you can't even pick the blasted things up and throw them out, they have some sort of anti-human forcefield around them. I am in consultation with the ladybirds, I've told them the earwigs dissed the ladybirds big time. Hopefully this will result in some sort of turf war in which earwig numbers are decimated as a result of scuttle by shootings by gangs of ladybird yoofs. One can but hope.
